Mask of Poison (Fall of Under Book 1) by Kathryn Kingsley (great novels to read txt) 📕

She only hoped it was durable enough.

The corpses that filled the rooms and hallways simply stared at them. They rotated to face Rxa, no matter where they were. She had tried screaming at them to go away. She had even stuck her spear through the heads of a few before she realized how futile it was to try to kill every one of them. It would probably take her a solid week to take them all down single-handedly.

And she apparently had somewhere to be. With Rxa. Somehow.

After she filled her bag with food and whatever else she could find that might be useful, she shouldered her pack and her spear and headed out the front door. She winced every time Rxa’s head bounced off the stairs as she pulled him down to the path. “Sorry.”

He didn’t respond.

It was then, looking at the sea of the dead that were waiting for a command, and the trees off in the distance, that she realized how hopeless her situation was.

“I need…a wagon, or something. I can’t drag you the whole way there.” She took off the broken blast goggles from the top of her head, ran her hand through her hair, and then put the goggles back on. They were pretty useless for protection, but they were great at keeping her hair out of her face. “What happens when you wake up? I’m going to be honest, I really don’t have a plan here.” With a groan, she looked up at the sky. “What in the name of the pits am I supposed to do?”

She heard a noise. Like hooves on stone. Turning, she blinked. Something was plowing through the crowd of drengil. Something big, and something angry. She could see the corpses buckling out of the way. Some went flying into the crowd. It wasn’t until the creature—whatever it was—got closer, that she could make out the shape of horns.

A second later, and a dark purple insect horse stomped up to her. His horns were covered in blood, and there were bits of gore and clothing stuck on the plates of his carapace. She recognized the etched markings that ran down the right side of the monster horse’s face.

“Cricket?”

The horse puffed air angrily out of his nose and reared up his back legs. He kicked a drengil in the head, shattering the corpse’s skull with a sickening crunch.

“You’re having a bad day too, huh?”

The horse reached his head out and began to nibble on her coat. She smiled and rubbed her hand up and down the side of his head. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”

He nudged her with his nose.

“Yeah. We should go. But…um…” She looked behind her and down at the ground where Rxa was still lying there, unmoving and unconscious.

If a horse could sigh and silently telegraph the words Are you fucking kidding me? Cricket did.

She laughed. It was a little overwrought, and it was exasperated, and it was tired, but it was still a laugh. “Just when you thought shit couldn’t get weirder or worse, here we are. I need to take him south to the Temple of Dreams. I understand if you don’t want to help me. It’s going to be dangerous, and I don’t even know what’ll happen when he wakes up. My blood poisons him—but for how long, and how effectively, I don’t know. I can’t ask you to come with me. I’m as good as dead. And if you’re with me, so are you.”

Cricket nudged her with his nose again, and then knelt. She watched as the cricket-horse folded his legs beneath him and sat like a cat or a dog might. She didn’t even know he could do that.

With a smile, she patted his neck. “Thank you, friend.”

It took her a minute to throw Rxa over Cricket’s back on his stomach. He wasn’t as skinny as she remembered him being, and he had a fair amount of heft to him. Once Cricket stood back up, she tied Rxa’s hands to his feet underneath the horse’s stomach. She made sure to keep the knots well out of the man’s reach.

And still, through it all, the drengil just stood there and stared at them.

Why did he tell them not to hurt me? So he could kill me himself? She rubbed the side of her neck again, feeling the two little sore spots where he had punctured her throat. It didn’t make any sense. With a sigh, she climbed onto Cricket’s back.

None of this made any sense. But she had fallen into a place that liked to throw surprises at her at every turn, it seemed.

For a moment, everything that was happening to her clicked into focus. Her hands shook, and she held on to one of the ridges of Cricket’s exoskeleton to keep them still. Live for every second.

Ember had to ride south. A journey that might take weeks. She had to do it through a nightmare world where everything wanted to kill her.

On the back of a monster horse that she had managed to befriend.

With an insane and broken king of the dead as her prisoner.

Cricket began to plod through the crowd of the unmoving, mindless corpses that turned to stare at them as they headed down the road toward the woods. Lighting their way was the pale yellow one that had come to Under with what was left of her world.

There was only one word that ran through her mind. It was only four letters, but it summarized everything that had happened to her so far, and everything that was to come. For however long she survived, anyway.

Ember sighed.

“Fuck.”

To Be Continued In

Fall of Under: Book Two

“Grave of Words”

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Also by Kathryn Ann Kingsley

Fall of Under:

Mask of Poison

Grave of Words

Ruin of Fate

Harrow Faire:

The Contortionist

The Puppeteer

The Clown

The Ringmaster

The Faire

Immortal Soul:

Heart of Dracula

Curse of Dracula

The Impossible Julian Strande:

Illusions of Grandeur

Ghosts &